“It’s giving colonialism”: Ireland still owes rent to dukes and earls
Although, even though the OPW lists these rents as payable, some of the named beneficiaries say they haven't been getting them.
For some, like the Connors family, it’s years. An Oireachtas committee recommended introducing a legal limit – but that hasn’t happened.
In February, a homeless woman emailed councillors with complaints about professional boundaries at an inner-city listening service.
April Mooney says the subsidy the council’s offering her on her own isn’t enough to stay, or to get another place, so the council advised her to go into homeless accommodation.
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive says that under an agreed protocol only disused or derelict tents are removed, while those who are homeless say different.
“So are we going to find out who runs the hostels?” says Louisa Santoro, the CEO of the Mendicity Institution, a homeless day centre.
And the figures could be an undercount, depending on who is counted and who is left out.
Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien last year asked local authorities to stop enforcing the “local connection” rule. But now it’s back, says one charity CEO.
Each woman who features also wrote about their experience of homelessness, a sliver of their own story, to go alongside their portraits.
The Department of Social Protection sometimes pays for burials but not for cremations. For one Lithuanian family, that almost meant they were unable to get a loved-one’s remains home to rest.
“The importance of play to children is clear and is protected by the UN Convention on the Rights of Children via Article 31,” says Ombudsman for Children Niall Muldoon.
Dublin Region Homeless Executive did not record interactions with homeless people judged not to be from Dublin for much of last year, leaving them invisible.
Lower social welfare payments for people aged 18–24 mean it’s even more of a struggle for them to gather the resources to move out of a hostel and into a home.